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Tech-exec moms spark firestorm

But Sandberg’s message “doesn’t resonate with all women entrepreneurs,” said Shaherose Charania, co-founder and chief executive of Women 2.0, a media company focused on increasing the number of female founders of technology startups.

“It’s not relevant,” Charania said. “Women entrepreneurs are creating their company cultures and are becoming leaders in their own ways.”

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Another high-profile detractor is Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former State Department official, who attacked Sandberg in The Atlantic for suggesting work-life balance is easy to achieve.

“Although couched in terms of encouragement, Sandberg’s exhortation contains more than a note of reproach,” wrote Slaughter, now a Princeton University professor. “We who have made it to the top, or are striving to get there, are essentially saying to the women in the generation behind us: ‘What’s the matter with you?’”

Not all women are put off by Sandberg’s arguments. Some, like entrepreneur Lise Buyer, say that it’s a tough message but one that deserves to be heard.

“For the people it is aimed at, Sheryl’s advice is very important and spot on,” said Buyer, founder of the Class V Group, an initial public offering advisory firm. “I’m almost always the only woman in the room in investment banking world.”

Yet perhaps illustrating how complicated these issues can be, Slaughter is angered by Sandberg but defensive on behalf of Mayer. The Yahoo chief executive’s job, she argued in a different blog post, is to run the company, not make life easy for working moms.

Some also have taken note that both Mayer and Sandberg are wealthy and powerful, ingredients for choice over their working lives. Not only have they cracked the top echelon of Silicon Valley firms, but they are doing so as mothers of young children. They remain aberrations in an industry dominated by men at every level.

Their successes and their lifestyles, critics say, have little to do with the reality of most tech workers. Mayer reportedly had a private nursery built at Yahoo’s headquarters, as AllThingsD reported. Sandberg boasts that she leaves the office at 5:30 p.m. each day to eat dinner with her family.

“Are these two brilliant, powerful working mothers actually oblivious to the sensitivities and struggles of people working for a living in Silicon Valley?” asked Mike Cassidy in the San Jose Mercury News.

Such commentaries rankle Fiorina, who is baffled that critics don’t see their own sexism in their reactions to Mayer and Sandberg. What they’re dealing with in these firestorms, she said, “is just different than if they were men.”

“Sheryl and Marissa are tough ladies; they don’t expect everyone to stand up and say everything they do is wonderful,” Fiorina said. “But you also don’t see headlines when a new male CEO goes off to have a baby.”